1) Mostly Harmless (HHGTTG #5) - Douglas Adams- Finally read this, after being a fan of the original(s) since high school. This one pretty much sucked and I should have taken the advice of other fans and left it well enough alone.

2) Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum (audio) - Pretty good. I don't usually read spy thrillers, but this one was pretty good, if a bit overlong. way different from the movie, which I hadn't seen before starting the book.

3) Cat's Eyewitness (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries) -- by Rita Mae Brown, Sneaky Pie Brown; (audio) Formerly a guilty pleasure, I don't know why I keep reading this series when they keep getting worse and more idiotic. I wish Rita Mae would go back to writing about lesbians instead of cats.

4) Life of Pi - by Yann Martel(audio) - a pleasure from beginning to end. The story of an Indian boy on a lifeboat with zoo animals after a ship transporting them sinks. Made me want to visit the zoo, or name my next pet "Richard Parker".

5) Rainbow Party -Paul Ruditis - Sensationalistic teen novel about oral sex parties. Not a good book really, but notable for the fearmongering it inspired on news programs, ie: "Rainbow Parties- are YOUR kids having them? News at 11".

6) The Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson (audio) - My first Stephenson. A little hard to follow but really good. Convoluted ending. Audio book is very well read..

7) The Penultimate Peril (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 12) -- by Lemony Snicket - the second to last in the series. Not sure it needed to be 13 books long, but we'll see how it ends...

8) The Strange Files of Fremont Jones by Dianne Day (audio)9) Fire and Fog - by Dianne Day (audio)10) The Bohemian Murders --by Dianne Day;(audio)11) Emperor Norton's Ghost by Dianne Day (audio)Mystery series set in 1905-1910's San Francisco. fluff, but fun.

12) Wigfield : The Can-Do Town That Just May Not by Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, Stephen Colbert (audio) - hilarious. Audio version is especially choice.

13) The Ruby in the Smoke (Sally Lockhart Trilogy, Book 1) by Philip Pullman (audio) - haven't read the trilogy he's known for, but picked this up on a whim. Who doesn't love a good story about Victorian orphans and opium dens?

14) Life is Elsewhere - Milan Kundera- argh. I used to like Kundera when I was in college. Is this one bad, or have a just outgrown my taste for lyrical Czech romanticism?

Graphic novels/ comics:1) Michael Chabon Presents. . .The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Volume 1 -- by Michael Chabon- In which he creates a fake backstory to get many artists to draw Escapist stories. Interesting but non-essential for fans of Kavalier and Clay.

non fiction:1) My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student Rebekah Nathan- Anthropologist goes undercover and does ethnography at an unnamed state university to find out about college life. Most shocking revelation: her fellow students were not even mildly curious to know why a 40+ year old "freshman" would be living in a dorm rather than her own apartment (or they assumed it was some heartbreaking divorce and didn't want to hear the tale of woe).

2) 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37) Bernard Goldberg- Right-wingish, but occasional hits the mark. Big surprise: Michael Moore is #1. Among the more amusing choices: Paris Hilton's parents (since you have to lay the blame for her somewhere), and the black Congresswoman who thought some hurricanes ought to have "black names" (aka, Hurricane Shaniqua rather than Hurricane Andrew or Betsy) in the name of "inclusiveness".

3) The Commitment : Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family by Dan Savage- In which everyone's favorite queer advice columnist ponders getting "married" 6 years after he and his partner adopted their son. Hilarity ensues when his Catholic mom complains about the cryptic artistic image on the party invites, and then wishes she hadn't, as Dan explains this is the painting hanging over the urinal at the club where they first drunkenly hooked up.

4) The Areas of My Expertise -by John Hodgman- a fake almanac type thing for McSweeny's fans. I liked it, but the humor isn't for everyone. Especially hobos.

The only "famous" writers I went to school with were all at my college: Rod Dreher (Right wing columnist, formerly of National review; didn't know him in college but he wrote for the college paper), Carla Speed McNeil, (a comic book writer/artist who was a good pal of mine at the time but now I've lost touch with her), and Josh Russell,(a protege of Andrei Codescru; he wrote one novel, it was pretty good but went nowhere; he dated a good friend of mine so I hung out with them back when they were dating). I think those are the only three, which is kinda suprising for a school with 25,000 students.

Famous Writer I see at work occasionally when the Democrats use our meeting rooms: the incredibly tall Mark Lindquist , author of not-bad grunge novel "Never Mind Nirvana".

small small world

i googled paul, and though i didn't find a photo (yet) for specific confirmation, i'm pretty sure it's him from the philly part and the performing arts part. his CV involves some alias scripts-into-book type things. there's one alias tome that lists him and jj abrams as co-writers. that's hott.

he was a cool guy, as i recall. in elementary school, i was good friends with someone who lived on the same street as him, so when we would hang out after school, it usually involved paul. though i will say that absolutely no rainbow parties were involved.